Brave laid his hands on his thighs and shook his head and could say nothing. Alan went on. "Has she been playing with me, then? Or can they get physical pleasure from us? Or was it her job to watch me for signs of awareness?" "Not that. You've been engaged too long for that." "Well, what is the reason? Is it possible that she could actually be in love with me? Me, a member of a lower species! I've asked myself, could I fall in love with an orangutan? A fairly bright, good-looking orangutan? The answer always comes out _no_." "Hardly a fair comparison." Alan glanced over at the mirror that formed the west wall of the otherwise plastiglassed-in room. He saw himself haggard, gray in the face, with bloodshot pouched eyes, and clad in tweeds that had obviously been slept in. "Hardly fair to the ape," he said, grinning a little. "I can't believe Win is one of them," said Brave stubbornly. "And I can't find any other explanation. If I make sure she is, and if we find they're evil, as we think, then I know what's the first thing I'll do." He looked his friend in the eyes. "I'll kill her, Brave. I'll cut her damned lying throat!" * * * * * Then he stood up. "Enough of that. There are bigger things at stake than Win right now. I think we may take it as a truism that you and I can't hinder the superman's plans worth a whoop. Nor could we get to more than one or two people in authority before we were found out and stopped. Lord, the very ones we'd naturally go to are probably mutants themselves! So there's just one thing to be done. Enlist the fellows we know are all right. There's Don Mariner, for a start. He's plump and balding and looks ineffective but he's as smart a lad as we have on the Project. Then there's Rob Pope; he was in the hospital last month when he cut himself badly on a hot sheet of plastiquartz. He's in the plastic chemistry section, but he knows a lot about hypnotism and such-like, so he'd be an asset." "Can we trust him just because he cut himself? He might have faked the pain." "Brave, we've got to trust somebody! All we can do is grasp at little indications of true humanity. Let's see. Who else is there?" "Bill Thihling, the rocketjet man. He was at Oxford with me. Rhodes scholar, prince of a guy, and abnormally sensitive--I've seen him throw up when a dog was run over. He's no callous mutant." "Good deal. That's five of us. Any more?" They thought hard. Mentioning names, discarding them as unsure risks, they ran through all their acquaintances. No more potential allies could they find till Alan said, "Jim McEldownie!" "What do we know about Jim?"